


freedom among the ashes

by sapphicish



Category: Harlots (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Unresolved Romantic Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-01
Updated: 2020-04-01
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:02:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23433592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sapphicish/pseuds/sapphicish
Summary: Nancy is at her side when news of her brother's death breaks all across London.
Relationships: Nancy Birch/Isabella Fitzwilliam
Comments: 4
Kudos: 31





	freedom among the ashes

**Author's Note:**

> oh this was so rushed after i spontaneously decided to rewatch s3 (which was not Great, let's just be clear) for the first time since it came out. definitely not my favorite thing i've ever written, but...these are my WIVES.

Nancy is at her side when news of her brother's death breaks all across London. She cannot breathe when she hears of it: she has to request Nancy's aid in undoing her laces so that she may gulp in as much air as she can, but even that is not enough; even then something in her body seems wrong, as if it wants to purge and instead does the opposite, taking more and more in until she feels over-full and tight inside, her mouth trembling and her head aching.

She places her hands against the wall and when that is not enough she presses her head there too, between them, and Isabella thinks of how clammy and cold her skin must be, unpleasant to the touch when Nancy does touch her, hesitantly, at her spine and then higher at the back of her neck as the first sob tears itself free from the depths of her hard, burning throat.

“He is gone,” Isabella says, and she does not care how or when or why, just that it _is,_ that he is gone, he is gone, he is gone and she is – she is –

“You're free,” Nancy says, her voice soft at her ear, so close and yet so far away, and Isabella cries out, sinks to the floor with her skirts pooled around her, and Nancy follows her down.

A part of her thinks: who else would be so willing to do this? To be with her now, here? To follow her down to this floor, and to not hold her but to be near, to be careful and quiet and a little hesitant but _true,_ not wanting anything but to help her through this terrible ordeal? The only other person who might have done that once is gone, long gone, dead – like her brother. Like Harcourt.

Only, surely, they occupy separate planes entirely. Surely Charlotte dwells in paradise, and Harcourt dwells among all the other demons, and she hopes – she prays – that as she sits here sobbing desperately into her hands, he is being choked and devoured and spat out like the fiend he is.

Isabella counts herself fortunate to have Nancy here with her, counts herself equally fortunate that it is only the two of them, in this bright sunlight in the parlor, all which seems so unfitting at the moment. Nancy had come to her with a foreign look on her face, and perhaps Isabella should have known then.

She had not. Instead, she asks with all the concern she can muster what is wrong, what happened, Nancy, are you all right, and then Nancy laughs and tells her, and— _this_ is the wrongness, that Isabella is not laughing with her but rather crying, so hard that her whole body shakes with it. She feels her soul must be quaking, as well, wracked with emotion and turned inside out.

She twists to the side, clumsily, and throws her arms around Nancy. It is all she can think to do: nothing else would be right. Surely it would take countless times more effort to laugh right along with her, or to sit with a blank look on her face and process, or to stand and gather herself and send Nancy away.

Surely it might hurt more, though she cannot imagine anything that would be at once worse and better than this.

“You're going to make yourself ill,” Nancy murmurs at her ear, and Isabella realizes after a dull, passing moment that she's right. She feels it washing over her in waves, a swelling and ebbing tide; joy and anger and horror and terror and everything she has ever felt being released at once.

She is thinking of his face, and she finds it difficult to think of it dead: not difficult as in hard, painful, but difficult as in hard, impossible. “Ever since I was a girl, I knew that he would haunt me forever, and there would be no release from it, no relief, no _peace..._ ” Another sob catches in her throat.

“And now?”

Isabella presses her hands to her wet eyes, to her flushed cheeks. Nancy's hands are at the small of her back, rubbing over the length of her spine, a pressure so steady and deep she can feel it through her layers, and she suddenly wants the corset off the rest of the way, wants to be free of all these terrible choking sensations.

She stays, instead, and practices that feeling instead: knowing that she can stay, and will stay, and it is her choice. _All_ hers.

Just as every choice she makes after this will be all hers, until the day she dies, because her captor is gone.

“Now I fear I will not believe it until I see it for myself.”

Nancy looks at her. The distance between them is so short, so small and shining, a mere glimpse of empty space, that Isabella could lean in and kiss her. If she likes. And perhaps she does. Perhaps she would. Perhaps she will.

She doesn't.

“You'll see him for the burial, my lady.”

Isabella feels her breath trapped in her throat. She pushes it out, shaking her head. “No. I don't think I will. I do not think I _want_ to.”

Nancy lifts her shoulders a little, dismissive, uncaring. “Your choice, Lady Isabella. Take it from me, then. My word. The cunt is dead.”

“I believe you,” Isabella whispers. Even now her breaths come sharp and ragged. She wants to lie down, wants to ease herself from this corset and these skirts and slide into a warm bath, she wants to be able to breathe and breathe and breathe...

Nancy sighs. “Come. It'll do you no good sitting on the floor.” Her hands wrap around Isabella's arms and pull, and it is a firm and safe grip, nothing like what Isabella is used to, nothing at all like it. Nancy is nothing at all like anything she is used to.

Helped by this wonder, Isabella stumbles her way over onto a chaise and fidgets a hand back to yank the rest of her laces loose. Nancy, so dear and sweet and surprisingly delicate, kneels in front of her and watches with calm patience, despite smeared darkness around her eyes and a weight in her gaze that suggests exhaustion. “I am sorry,” Isabella says suddenly, at the sight of it; she turns away, shakes Nancy's hands free from hers. “You should not—you should not have to be here, to coddle and comfort me. I understand completely if you've other affairs to attend to. I will not keep you.”

She can only hope Nancy hears the sincerity in a voice that can't help but tremble, in a face that can't help but weep. She doesn't know what's taken her in its grasp, but it's a cold and deep and dark thing, and the idea of putting herself back together is a difficult concept, but she will manage. She has always managed.

And when she does, she will do so knowing that it will not repeat itself this time, because her brother is _gone._

Nancy is looking at her strangely, now – a hesitation on both sides, a gap to be bridged. She cannot help but wonder _how,_ the same way she used to wonder with Charlotte. “Do you want me to leave?”

Isabella realizes with a jolt of horror that she's offended her, somehow – “No!” Her breath catches, and for one moment the humiliation and the fear is greater than whatever she'd been feeling before. Now not only has she offended, she has been too eager. “No. Of course not. Your company is...desired. Very. It is all that I could want.”

Their eyes meet for a long, passing moment. She feels heat swarm under her skin, something she imagines must flood her cheeks with color, but she doesn't look away. It is too honest; she is too honest, raw, bared and split open, but Nancy has seen this already, and Nancy has seen other things, and she will see more if she is willing, and for all of that, Isabella refuses to look away.

Nancy nods curtly, like that is it, like it is over and done, and drops her eyes. “Then I'll be staying.”

Isabella ducks her head. _Thank you_ seems unfitting, not enough, never enough, so she says nothing. Instead, she curls up on the chaise and breathes, and when Nancy carefully takes her hand as if she thinks she may be rejected and presses a kiss to the back of it, Isabella's heart flutters, and she holds on tight.

She can do whatever she wants now.

And what she wants is this.


End file.
